Great Portland Estates is mulling over making speculative starts on a number of schemes as conditions in the West End market remain favourable.
Chief executive Toby Courtauld said the firm would “probably” make a speculative start on a circa 380,000 sq ft development on the former Royal Mail Rathbone Place site, W1 (pictured), which it bought for £120m last year.
He said a decision would not be made until after the firm received approval for new MAKE-designed plans, which will be submitted in 2013.
The REIT’s refurbishment of the 51,000 sq ft office at 20 St James’s Street and its consented 140,000 sq ft redevelopment of 12-14 Fetter Lane, EC4, are also earmarked for potential speculative starts.
It is continuing to look for a prelet at its 50%-owned 100 Bishopsgate City tower.
The comments followed a bumper set of annual results in which the group delivered a 12% hike in net asset value to 403p a share.
Its portfolio increased in value by 9.3% in the year to March 2012 with development values rising by 13.7%.
GPE’s values continued to rise in the second half of the year, climbing 2.4% in its final quarter. The value of the group’s properties stood at £2bn at the year end, delivering an underlying capital return of 9.2%.
At the end of March it had around £457m of undrawn facilities with gearing at 40.3%.
